Tahafut_al-Tahafut-transl-Engl-van-den-Bergh

occupies the central place in the universe. They touch upon certain
difficult problems that were perceived by the Greeks. The paradoxes of
Zeno concerning movement and the infinite divisibility of space and time
hold their attention, and the subtle problem of the status of the
nonexistent, a problem long neglected in modern philosophy, but revived
by the school of Brentano, especially by Meinong, which caused an
endless controversy amongst the Stoics, is also much debated by them.
A later generation of theologians, the Ash‘arites, named after Al Ash‘ari,
born A. D. 873, are forced by the weight of evidence to admit a certain
irrationality in theological concepts, and their philosophical speculations,
largely based on Stoicism, are strongly mixed with Sceptical theories.
They hold the middle way between the traditionalists who want to forbid all
reasoning on religious matters and those who affirm that reason unaided
by revelation is capable of attaining religious truths. Since Ghazali founds
his attack against the philosophers on Ash‘arite principles, we may
consider for a moment some of their theories. The difference between the
Ash‘arite and Mu‘tazilite conceptions of God cannot be better expressed
than by the following passage which is found twice in Ghazali (in his
Golden Means of Dogmatics and his Vivification of Theology) and to which
by tradition is ascribed the breach between Al Ash‘ari and the Mu‘tazilites.
‘Let us imagine a child and a grown-up in Heaven who both died in
the True Faith, but the grown-up has a higher place than the child.
And the child will ask God, “Why did you give that man a higher
place?” And God will answer, “He has done many good works.” Then
the child will say, “Why did you let me die so soon so that I was
prevented from doing good?” God will answer, “I knew that you would
grow up a sinner, therefore it was better that you should die a child.”
Then a cry goes up from the damned in the depths of Hell, “Why, O
Lord, did you not let us die before we became sinners?” ’
Ghazali adds to this: ‘the imponderable decisions of God cannot be
weighed by the scales of reason and Mu‘tazilism’.
According to the Ash‘arites, therefore, right and wrong are human
concepts and cannot be applied to God. ‘Cui mali nihil est nec esse potest
quid huic opus est dilectu bonorum et malorum?’ is the argument of the
Sceptic Carneades expressed by Cicero (De natura deorum, iii. 15. 38). It
is a dangerous theory for the theologians, because it severs the moral
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